The union representing the editorial staff at Gawker Media has announced that it has successfully bargained the first union contract at a digital media company – an innovative three-year deal that sets minimum pay levels and gives Gawker’s 99 union members a 3% across-the-board raise each year.

Lowell Peterson, executive director of the Writers Guild of America East, the union representing Gawker’s workers, said the deal was far different from traditional television or newspaper contracts. He said it includes an unusual provision on editorial independence: “Any decision on editorial content has to be made by the editorial side – not by business decisions or advertisers.”

With some workers complaining that they were paid unjustifiably less than others, the contract sets a minimum salary of $50,000 for any full-time Gawker employee, a minimum of $70,000 for senior writers and editors, and a minimum of $90,000 for deputy editors and the editors-in-chief of some of Gawker’s smaller websites. The contract says every employee will be able to meet at least once yearly with his or her supervisor to discuss merit raises.

“Once we get the contract in place, some of the other places in the industry that screw their writers a lot worse than we do will be able to have something to hold up and say: ‘This is the industry standard,’” said Hamilton Nolan, a Gawker senior writer who was one of the main organizers of the union.

In June 2015, Gawker became the first digital media company to unionize [see footnote], followed by Salon, Vice Media, Huffington Post and Guardian US – which have yet to bargain contracts. When the unionization drive began at Gawker – which includes such sites as Jezebel, Deadspin, Gizmodo and Jalopnik – the management, unlike that at many companies, did not oppose it. Indeed, Gawker’s founder, Nick Denton, said he was “intensely relaxed” about it.

Heather Dietrick, Gawker’s president and general counsel, said of the bargaining: “It was a great process. The writers and the union maintained an open dialogue, and included a lot of people in the process.”

She noted that 15 to 20 Gawker staffers attended each bargaining session, adding: “It’s more typical to have one or two bargaining committee folks there.”

She said she was pleased that the contract calls a monthly forum in which workers meet with senior management. “I think they overall like the company,” Dietrick said. “The contract really preserves some of the best parts of it.”

Gawker’s employees are scheduled to vote on the contract over the next week.

After a year of working at Gawker, the contract says, full-time freelancers must either be hired as regular staff employees or let go. “That way they won’t be kept in permanent limbo,” Peterson said. As for part-time freelancers, after a year with Gawker, their daily pay levels are to be raised to that of regular employees.

Under the contract, Gawker’s current health plan will remain in force, and the company agreed to absorb the first 10% increase in health costs in year one and again in year two. “This is an innovative way to lock in benefits,” Peterson said. “If the costs really skyrocket, the benefits will be negotiated on. People won’t just be told: ‘This is how your benefits have been changed.’”

Nolan said: “We didn’t get everything we wanted, but overall we got the big things we wanted. It sort of demonstrates the point that if you unionize, you will get things that you would not have gotten otherwise.”

One thing the union sought but did not get was a continuation of Gawker’s sabbatical benefit, in which employees receive a paid four-week sabbatical after four years on the job. These will be phased out within six months.

The contract calls for continuing Gawker’s 401(k) plan, a dollar-for-dollar match for the first 3% of pay.

Unlike the vast majority of union contracts, the Gawker deal does not include a provision saying workers can only be dismissed “for cause”; they will instead remain at-will employees. Peterson and Nolan said the union’s members did not want a “for cause” provision.

Peterson said this was a field that often saw creative differences between editors and writers, adding that several union members said: “We would like the company to be able to get rid of this person if there are differences as long as they get a good severance.”

This footnote was appended on 3 March 2016. The article said that Gawker was the first digital company to become unionised. To clarify: Gawker is believed to be the first commercial company to be unionised but in 2009 Truthout, a not for profit digital organisation, negotiated a union contract, which came into force in 2010.